SUPERFRONT PRESENTS

SOMETHING ABOUT ROOMS AND WALLS (click for catalogue)

ANTHONY GROSS, FARRAH KARAPETIAN, ARIANE LOURIE, MITCH MCEWEN, PROXY, COKE URBANO

7 MARCH - 25 APRIL, 2008

SUPERFRONT, a storefront architecture gallery and project space, presents SOMETHING ABOUT ROOMS AND WALLS, an exhibition of recent work in various media by Anthony Gross (London), Farrah Karapetian (LA), Ariane Lourie (New York), Mitch McEwen (SuperFront), Coke Urbano (Madrid), Proxy (New York). This group show of built prototypes, works on paper, and architectural media is on view from March 7 through April 25 at Superfront in Brooklyn, NY.

Can walls think? Are rooms obsolete? What can architecture and art teach each other about rooms and walls?

The subject of rooms and walls serves here to stake out a territory without disciplinary boundaries. In architecture, as the formalism of the past 15 years has concerned itself primarily with topology and continuous space, rooms and walls have become almost passé. Yet, in art's return to installation and object-oriented work, we see the physical space of the gallery revisited as a contemporary concern.

As contemporary currents in art revisit built architecture as a concern, echoing the 1960s and 1970s, young architects look to theoretical unbuilt architecture of the same time period. These tensions - between built and unbuilt, material and theoretical, art and architecture - underpin the works presented here. Proxy's wall protoype, digitally generated from New York City 311 complaint data, points to the capacity of building material to store and communicate information. Farrah Karapetian's photogram installation investigates a similar notion of storage and transfer with entirely analog tactics.

Anthony Gross, an architect by training, founded the temporarycontemporary art space in London. This is his first show in New York. Ariane Lourie teaches at Yale School of Architecture and is working on several publications with Eisenman Architects. Mitch McEwen, curator of the group show, teaches Visual Studies at Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Preservation and Planning and practices urban design. Coke Urbano, an artist trained as an interior designer and member of the Collectivo Casablanca in Madrid, converts the walls here into a child-like game of interactivity.

Whether a game that becomes a wall or a computer script that becomes a tool of fabrication, these works develop conceptual play that encounters and reconfigures the materials of building. Opens evening March 7, 2008 6pm - 8pm.

SUPERFRONT is located on 1432 Atlantic Avenue in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Gallery hours: Sat & Sun 1-6 PM and by appointment. Subway: A train to Nostrand Avenue. For more information please contact Mitch McEwen, project director.

SuperFront is a new space for architectural experimentation, located in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Inspired by artist-run art spaces such as temporarycontemporary in London or Brooklyn's recently evicted DUMBA collective, SuperFront operates as both an architectural studio and gallery. As a site of architectural investigation, SuperFront hosts exhibits and conferences that may also concern art, performance, and digital media.